Making the Penalty Fit The Crime

"I am satisfied any farmer or other person operating heavy equipment in the course of a farm operation is more likely to be deterred from risking a child's safety by the prospect that the child could die, than by the prospect of going to jail."
"[Bauman] has always accepted full moral responsibility for his son's death. The issue is whether Mr. Bauman is criminally responsible for his son's death."
"Children have ridden with their fathers on their tractors for generations. Objectively assessed those tractor rides -- children standing beside their father or riding on the fenders have always been dangerous."
"What is different in this case is that four-year-old Steven was standing in a bucket, untethered, when his father's attention was, inevitably, going to be drawn to his work and away from Steven."
"[It was] completely foreseeable [that Steven could fall out and that] serious life-threatening bodily harm would occur."
"[Bauman lost his son and] there is no more ultimate price than that."
Ontario Court Justice Julia Morneau

Ontario farmer Emanuel Bauman walks from the Owen Sound Courthouse Thursday afternoon after being given a suspended sentence with three years probation for criminal negligence in the accidental death of his four-year-old son. (Robert Krbavac/CBC)

"Can you imagine [the extent of the toll taken on the family]."
"He's serving a life sentence of grief and remorse. It will never leave his family."
"As his other children grow up, he'll have that explaining to do."
Doug Grace, defence lawyer

In Canada, eight to ten children under age 16 die every year in mishaps taking place on a farm. Yet, according to Marcel Hacault, executive director of the Canadian Agricultural Safety Association, police appear reluctant -- in such tragic circumstances where a father's lack of attention and care results in his own child's death -- to lay adequate charges reflecting the situation and the gravity of its outcome.

Emanuel Bauman who owns a family farm in Grey Highlands located roughly 150 kilometres northwest of Toronto, last August had two of his five children in his care while he was involved in farm work. Mr. Bauman, 32, allowed his son Steven, four years old, to stand in the bucket of the skid steer alongside his seven year-old brother Luke. Their father was pulling a trailer of woodchips intending to build a laneway.

Looking back at the trailer as its load was dropped, he failed to see that his younger son had fallen out of the bucket. The child died of a fatal head injury. On May 14 his father was found guilty of criminal negligence. And on this past Thursday his sentence was delivered. He would avoid prison. The Crown had called for a two year jail sentence to deter farmers from placing vulnerable children in similarly dangerous situations.

Justice Morneau pointed out that this was a dire life lesson that would never be repeated by the farmer, that safety improvements had since his son's death been instituted on the farm, so that the child's four other siblings would never be placed in a dangerous life-threatening situation. Originally Mr. Bauman pleaded not guilty, but conceded all that the Crown disclosed including photographs, autopsy report and statements he made himself to police, all incriminating evidence.

According to Mr. Hacault, Mr. Bauman's conviction of criminal negligence causing death represented a "major escalation" in punishment historically brought down in such cases, leaving him with the hope that it would be noted, and thoroughly discussed within farm families that children die needlessly in farming accidents.

The Ontario home of Emanuel Bauman, where his son Steven was killed last year in a farming accident. Bauman was charged and convicted of criminal negligence in what is believed to be a landmark decision. (Robert Krbavac/CBC)